Sunday, May 15, 2011

timer, robin, repetition

Dandelion clock with bluebells.

A robin is making a huge din in a cherry tree. I watch its throat rippling in time with the trills. As I step back to photograph it, I think of how often robins have flown down to exploit me while I turn the soil, and here am I exploiting the little bird's brave and vocal defence of its territory.

Of course I repeat myself in this blog. Every year I find myself noting the same buds and flowers birds and animals. Every year though there is, I hope, a variation in what I see and in the way I describe or comment on it. Sometimes it is a fallen leaf from a tree which takes my fancy on the pavement, perhaps the same patch of pavement. But I have an idea that there will still be differences in the way it lies; and if not in its posture then in mine. "I grow old, I grow old, I wear the bottom of my trousers rolled" but rolled differently and may be they are different trousers.Then there is the opportunity, not yet taken to have rows and rows of the same photograph lined up, like an Andy Warhol series of prints. The seasons repeat themselves and birds singing the same notes learn the same songs from their parents.

One of our oldest friends - in terms of actual years, pushing 90 - who is rather weary and oblivious of many things, has remarked with astonishment every spring for the last few years that he has never seen one like it. He seems to grow more alive to it every year, unless he is just astonished to be still alive at all. Whichever, it is quite cheering. Small children, I've observed, are fairly oblivious of the seasons, only noticing if it's hot, cold, raining, snowing, ?Christmas etc.

If your repetitions took the same form then you might have cause to worry; the horrible thought that words were clogging up into phrases and sentences in your word barrel and were thereby losing flexible application. But I think I can safely say that isn't happening and you're still able to stick your hand into the barrel, grab an assortment and then put them together with novel felicity. A rather clumsy metaphor on my part but one which proves my point; I haven't used that assembly before.

There is a further defence of repetition. None of my stuff is sufficiently memorable that it has seared itself into the memory of those who read me. Repetition, with a caveat attached, is I think forgivable.

M-L I think this conversation is a repition of a previous one some time ago. If you don't remember, I am excused, if you do your response justifies it.

Lucy How right your friend is! It reflects a sense of gratitude which I share. Children seem to live completely in the present. The past is forgetable; the future infinitely expandable and barely worth a thought. Such insouciance quickly fades. What bliss though while it lasts!

CC Thanks. As children we were taught to blow the seeds off the "clock" counting each puff and repeating the words, one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock ...etc. No seeds left and you knew the hour. Try it.

My fear of clogging up in the word barrel is palpable. My reluctance to repeat is I suppose based on Jean Cocteau's boast that he never repeated anything. But he was a notorious boaster.

About Me

Compasses

Following their Handbook for Explorers collaboration on the Compasses site (link below), Lucy Kempton and I are working together on a new venture, Questions. This is a series of poems submitted by each of us alternately, and prompted in the case of each poem by the previous poem and a new question. It is a process of adventure and discovery. Join us for the ride.http://www.compasses-lucyandjoe.blogspot.com/